Very happy to be presenting some brand new work on Saturday, April 1 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) for the 2nd Annual Art Historians of the Twin Cities Symposium from 10am-3pm. The Art and Art History Department at St. Kate’s is a co-sponsor of this event that showcases the current research of local and regional scholars of art history. This will be my second time presenting in the company of these amazing scholars. The event is free and open to the public, so if you are local it might be a fun way to see what art historians in the greater metro area are doing. I’m slightly biased, but totally looking forward to a presentation by my former office mate from St. Olaf College, Christopher Tradowsky. Students currently taking my course on Global Japan: Art, Anime, and Visual Culture should take note of the presentation by Frenchy Lunning.

I was so excited that the student designer at MCAD used some of my archival photographs of The Smiling Book for the symposium poster. Some readers might recall me writing about this discovery on this blog a few months ago. My presentation titled “The Texture of Crepe: Western Women and the Conoisseurship of Japanese Crepe Paper Books (chirimen–bon)” will be a meditation on the value of digging locally and the medium of crepe paper in Japan as it pertains to the role of Western women in collecting and connoisseurship. This work is very new to me, and the first project in a while that doesn’t deal with race and representation in Japan. However, it does stick with the timeline of my dissertation (late 19th century).

Can’t wait!